Check your baggage…

July 12, 2021

For this Sunday’s sermon our Pastor used the Scripture reading from Mark 6:7-13 on which to base his remarks. That passage concerns the instructions that Jesus gave his Disciples when he sent them out to preach to the world. Basically, Jesus told the Disciples to take nothing with them, to leave everything behind, to take no baggage with them and to depend upon the kindness of strangers for their food and shelter.

Pastor Matlack opined that we all have baggage, not just physical baggage in the form of stuff, but mental baggage in the form of fears, regrets and prejudices. He suggested that we need to leave our baggage behind in order to be able to go out in the world and share the good news of Jesus. We need to check our baggage so that we are left with nothing weighing us down. Check your baggage.

Some of our baggage, especially prejudices, may be hard to let go of, almost like a favorite possession. Many may have been with us a very long time and we find comfort in just letting them dictate our actions and reactions, rather than having to stop and really think about things. They have become our “everybody knows” safe havens for our quick decisions and bad behavior. Check your baggage.

Pastor Matlack used the analogy of going through the TSA checkpoint at the airport. We are no longer allowed to get on the plane with anything dangerous on our person or in our carryon baggage– guns, knives (box cutters) explosives, or liquids.  When you think about it, airplanes before the TSA were a dangerous place to be since fellow passengers might have been carrying any or all of those items. Now, with modern TSA body scanners and luggage scanners it is impossible to hide those items and get on the plane with them., Check your baggage.

There is no TSA checkpoint or scanner for the mental baggage that you might be carrying around, especially the unfounded fears and prejudices about other people. Instead, we must use the scanning power of prayer to search deep within ourselves to expose those fears and preconceived notions. Once you have brought them out into the light of reason, you must make the decision on what to do with them. Pastor Matlack suggested that we check those fears and prejudices with God; that we not continue to carry them around. Check your baggage.

Checking your baggage with God is as Easy as curb-side baggage check at the airport. One only has to admit that they have that baggage and then hand them over to God. We are told in several places in the Bible that if we confess our sins (and prejudice is certainly a sin) we will be forgiven and the burden (the baggage) of those sins will be taken away from us. Take nothing with you when you leave home for the day today – no unfounded fears, no uncertainty about people and no doubts or regrets about your actions. Check in with God before your travels today and check your baggage.

Have a great week ahead unencumbered by all your baggage.

Check your baggage with God.

Leave a Comment » | faith, Inspiration | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Norm Werner

Be strong and ask yourself why…

August 19, 2019

A quote from a recent post to the Jack’s Winning Words blog started me thinking, but probably not in the direction that Jack had in mind when he posted it – “Anyone can buy new things, but only a strong person can throw old things out.”  (Unknown)

What this little saying keyed off in my mind was the thought that to takes a strong person to discard old traditions or commitments, old knowledge and wisdom and old preconceived notions and prejudices and move on to embrace new things, new thoughts, new understandings and new relationships.

Jack mentioned looking for something that he must have inadvertently discarded in his post. I think that sometimes we also inadvertently accumulate things like fears or arrogantprejudices. Maybe it was something that we were told as a child by our parents about “those kinds of people”, or perhaps we saw something on the news about one bad actor from a particular group and we generalized it to cover the entire group. No matter how or when this “knowledge” was accumulated, it now serves only as bad mental baggage that needs to be reexamined and discarded.

It would be hypocritical of me not to admit that I, too, have some of those same reactions when I encounter people during the day. The difference, as I have grown older, is that I now stop myself and quickly try to reevaluate those feelings, BEFORE I take any action. I ask myself why. Why am I afraid of this person? Why do I find this person’s appearance to be alarming? Why am I immediately on the defensive with a person that I haven’t boredeven met? So, I’m admitting that I haven’t been able to completely discard those old preconceived notions and prejudices, but I am at least able to recognize them as such and modify my behavior to give me the chance to prove them wrong once again. The reward has been meeting and getting to know some really great people that I otherwise might have avoided.

How often do you stop yourself when you are in the process of prejudging someone based upon their color or ethnicity or lifestyle and question why those thoughts jumped into your mind? In law-enforcement there is a concept called “probable cause”. In theory that means that the law enforcement officers have to have some justifiable reason for taking action against someone – searching or arresting them – a probable cause for their actions. There has been much made of the appearance that some in law enforcement have acted without any justification and stopped some minorities for such causes as  “driving while black”. Perhaps we have all been guilty of such thoughts, if not such actions.

The key to not letting your past, and the mental baggage of prejudices that you’ve accumulated, rule your future is that little pause to consider the “why” of your worriesimmediate reaction. If you can do that, you can take the next step of examining the situation for any probable cause for that reaction. Most of the time there is no probable cause to be afraid or to immediately dislike someone, just because of his or her appearance; and, after all, that is all that you have to go on initially. Give the other person (and yourself) the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to be themselves. Be strong and throw out your old thoughts and welcome new people into your life. You might be pleasantly surprised at what great people are out there, just beyond your prejudices and fears.

Have a strong week ahead and don’t forget to stop and ask yourself – Why?

Leave a Comment » | Inspiration | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Norm Werner

Don’t know, don’t say…Don’t be a dwarf

December 8, 2014

Re-blogged from the Jack’s Winning Words blog –

 “To like an individual because he’s black is just as insulting as to dislike him because he isn’t white.”  (e.e. cummings)  Reverse black and white in the quote.  Does it make a difference?  Substitute LGBT and Straight for black and white.  Does it make a difference?  Many of the problems around us these days seem to have root in the fact that we do not see people as people.  You can’t legislate love.  Unless it comes from the heart, the problems will continue.    😉  Jack

I suspect that Leonardo da Vinci put his finger on a big part of the problem that Jack wrote about today when he said – “You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.”  Too much of the bigotry in the world today is based in ignorance; opinionatedignorance about the backgrounds and perspectives of the people against whom the bigotry is directed. It’s impossible for a white person to understand the impact of the repressive environment that many non-white people feel and experience day-to-day in America. What chance do you have to establish an understanding and appreciation for someone else, if you start from a base of fear because of their color?  

There was a political cartoon in the paper this weekend that captured some of that. It showed a young black person backed up against a wall by a heavily armed white policeman and an average citizen looking out their window at the policeman. Each had a thought bubble above their head with the work “fear” in it. While that cartoon was within the context of recent police shootings; it clearly demonstrates the pre-existing mental context that colors the interactions of many people with each other. That is a pre-existing prejudice that gets things off on the angry accuserwrong foot.  Chris Crutcher, author of Whale Talk, put it well – “…racist (bigoted) thought and action says far more about the person they come from than the person they are directed at.”
Something similar may be said about our notions of the LGBT community. Many censure those in the LBGT community because they do not understand it. Armistead Maupin put it well when he said – “I know I can’t tell you what it’s like to be gay. But I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not hiding behind words, like family and decency and Christianity.”  Having just gone through an election where every homophobic bigot on the ballot chose to hide behind those words, Maupin’s words ring true.

So, one may surmise that bigotry is based upon ignorance; but its real strength is based in
rejectedpreventing the exploration of knowledge about the topic, thereby shutting out the discovery of the truth. Like many other things in life that we fear, because they represent unknowns; fears based upon color or lifestyle evaporate once we know and understand the truth. As E.H.Chapin put it – “Bigotry dwarfs the soul by shutting out the truth.”

Don’t let yourself become a dwarf. Don’t know…don’t say. Go seek the truth.

 

Leave a Comment » | Inspiration | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Norm Werner